mcorechat

Bridge from meshcore device to synapse chat server

Overview

I didn't like using the web app for chatting with meshcore and I wouldn't consider writing an actual GUI app so I wrote bridge to extend meshcore to a matrix synapse chat server. This allows you to use a local client like element to chat with meshcore.

Features

• mesh2chat: CLI utility to run the bridge

[Discovery] channel in matrix synapse that allows service app users to be indexed in the public directory (bleh!)

Installation

Installation from scratch is provided here, but you will likely hit some thorny parts along the way. This is a two part installation and involves first installing a synapse chat server, and then installing the bridge. Knowledge of how to handle CLI and python pip installs is required for the moment (docker would be nice).

Install Synapse

Here are the instructions provided by synapse:

• https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/setup/installation.html

I didn't bother going that route (not for any particular reason) and instead installed from git as follows (change paths however you see fit)

* git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.git ${HOME}/src/synapse
* git -C ${HOME}/src/synapse checkout -b release-v1.146 -t origin/release-v1.146
* mkdir -p ${HOME}/mesh2chat
* python3 -mvenv ${HOME}/mesh2chat/synapse-app
* ${HOME}/mesh2chat/synapse-app/bin/pip install ${HOME}/src/synapse

At this point you should have a synapse server installed at ${HOME}/src/synapse.

Install mesh2chat

Now to install mcorechat. This will install it in the same application directory in home as the synapse server.

* git clone https://github.com/raincityio/mcorechat.git ${HOME}/src/mcorechat
* mkdir -p ${HOME}/mesh2chat
* python3 -mvenv ${HOME}/mesh2chat/mcorechat
* ${HOME}/mesh2chat/mcorechat/bin/pip install ${HOME}/src/mcorechat

Running

To run synapse, see the examples/run-synapse.sh file.

To run mcorechat, execute the following:

. ${HOME}/mesh2chat/mcorechat/bin/activate
mcorechat -c ${CONFIG_PATH}

Configuration

Configuration of both synapse and mcorechat is not documented here. Please see the examples directory, a description of the files in examples follows. They will all probably have to be tweaked to work:

• homeserver.yaml: configuration for synapse server.
• matrix-app.yml: configuration for the service app for synapse, this is the synapse side config for the bridge.
• mesh2chat.yml: configuration for the bridge itself, this is the config you supply to mcorechat.
• mesh2chat_logging.yml: logger configuration if you specify one for mcorechat config.
• run-synapse.sh: example runner for the synapse server if installed with method stated above.

TODO

• Direct message chats: The old POC backend (still available if you configure mcorechat to use it).
• Feedback for messages that are too long.
• I doubt I'm replaying state correctly for rooms.
• So much more.